Chiayu Hsu is an active composer of contemporary concert music and associate professor of composition at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Born in Banciao, Taiwan, Chiayu frequently explores ideas of cultural fusion. She derives inspiration from places, poems, myths, and images. Particularly, the combination of Chinese elements and western techniques is a hallmark of her music.

Chiayu’s works have been performed by numerous orchestras and chamber groups worldwide. Last year, her solo clarinet piece was featured on Eric Schultz’s album POLYGLOT.

Host Stephen Anthony Rawson talks with Chiayu about several works from her catalogue, her musical language, traveling, and more!

Host Austin Williams curates a listening experience with themes of feedback. Feedback is often associated with harsh sounds that are created when a microphone is placed too close to the speaker that it is amplified through.

While this is a way feedback can be aurally achieved there are many ways composers implement feedback and other broad strokes of recursion into their works! We cut back to an interview that Austin had with Paula Mathusen this past summer and listen to how she implements these ideas into her works.

We also look at feedback systems that composers create be-it through specific mic and speaker arrangements or internal feedback systems with no-input mixing.

Access Contemporary Music's popular Sound of Silent Film Festival celebrates twenty years of presenting modern silent films with newly commissioned scores performed live.

Host Seth Boustead features a few of his favorite scores from the last twenty years.